Romney's debut ad aims at Obama, ignores GOP foes

Mitt Romney’s first television ad of the 2012 campaign takes on President Barack Obama directly with a general election-style contrast message, declaring that the incumbent has “failed” and accusing Obama of trying to change the subject away from the economy.

The commercial, which starts airing tomorrow on New Hampshire’s WMUR station, opens with footage of an October 2008 Obama rally in the Granite State, where Obama is scheduled to make an appearance Tuesday.

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“I am confident that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis,” Obama says in the Romney spot, as text appears on screen reading: “He failed.”

Then, the Romney ad clips a section from the same Obama speech, in which the president mocked John McCain’s campaign for saying: “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”

Except in the Romney ad, there’s no mention of McCain. There’s just a snippet of the president saying: “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”

That’s when the soft, non-threatening footage of Mitt Romney comes in, starting with an image of the Republican’s announcement event in Stratham, N.H., and running through a number of other campaign stops. The narration is drawn from Romney speeches in Exeter, N.H., and Dubuque, Iowa, that focused on job creation and fiscal responsibility.

The full text of Romney’s voice-over: “I’m gonna do something to government. I call it the smaller, simpler, smarter approach to government. Getting rid of programs, turning programs back to states and, finally, making government itself more efficient. I’m gonna get rid of Obamacare. It’s killing jobs and it’s keeping our kids from having the bright prospects they deserve. We have a moral responsibility not to spend more than we take in. I’ll make sure that America is a job-creating machine, like it has been in the past. It’s high time to bring those principles of fiscal responsibility to Washington D.C.”

The commercial signals that, no matter what else is going on in the Republican primary, Romney remains as focused as ever on the man in the White House, and continues to campaign under the belief that the best way to win the primary is to show he’s the best man to fight the general election.

The ad also builds on Romney’s argument that Obama’s campaign promises don’t line up with the reality of his administration – a criticism that Romney supporters hope will balance out attacks on their own candidate’s political flip-flops.

“Three years ago, candidate Barack Obama mocked his opponent’s campaign for saying ‘if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose,’” she said. “Now, the tables have turned – President Obama and his campaign are doing exactly what candidate Obama criticized. President Obama and his team don’t want to talk about the economy and have tried to distract voters from President Obama’s abysmal economic record.”